Truth in Romance

I know you got a good heart, says a black man to a white, midway through Restaurant, but even so, I dont trust you. Writer Tom Cudworth and director Eric Bross have fashioned a sharp, upbeat, well-wrought meditation on love and race that kicks the new year in movies off to a terrific start. Given that the word restaurant constitutes a singularly dull and unpromising title, the energy and richness of the actual film are all the more sweet a surprise.

The place is Hoboken, one subway stop across the river from downtown Manhattan. The twin towers of the World Trade Center stand mistily in the distance like a pair of beckoning fingers, and, understandably, most of the folks who work in the upscale eatery at the storys center are eager to cross that river and make a bigger mark in the world. Chris (Adrien Brody) is the playwright who tends bar. Jeannine (Elise Neal) is the singer, daughter of a Motown great, who starts as the new waitress and instantly stirs up a romantic attraction in Chris. Indeed, hes stirred a little too instantly -- hes still walking around wounded from an affair with another black woman, Leslie (Lauryn Hill), that ended weeks ago. Being white, he takes a particularly pointed ribbing from friends of both races, but Cudworth and Bross are careful never to overstate any racial tension: Here at the turn of the 21st century, they suggest, the young of all colors are more comfortable with one another than their parents ever were; yet the battle lines are still there, however buried. Chris bitterly recalls his dead fathers mantralike use of the word nigger when he was growing up in riot-torn Newark. Its his own phobia about using the word that prompts one of the black cooks, Quincy (Jesse L. Martin), to confess that he cant trust Chris, despite his good heart -- that hes much more comfortable with a white man wholl use the word, like their mutual buddy Reggae (David Moscow).

Cudworth and Bross chart such paradoxes with great humor -- the back-and-forth putdowns are lifelike and infectiously funny -- but they never lose sight of damning details. (Reggae and Quincy are both bigoted against a waiter whos gay.) They also keep the focus on the love story, the myriad ways the exhaust from Chris bygone affair is polluting the air around his newer, and truer, love. As Jeannine comes to realize how closely shes following in another womans footsteps, she despairs that Chris will ever love her. For Chris, the psychological hangover may even topple his play, a drama about an interracial romance whose opening night looms throughout the film, and whose success could launch him into a new life. Alas, the actor playing the lead (Simon Baker-Denny) is a former friend who had a one-night stand with Leslie and even puts the moves on Jeannine. That hes a good actor and seems born to play the lead in a script Chris wrote about himself only fuels the comedic cycle of self-destruction.

This perverse interdependency between a hero and his alter-ego is the emblem of the movies overall wit, its biting honesty about the shadows that lurk even in good hearts. Brodys gaunt intensity, so memorable in The Thin Red Line and Summer of Sam, beautifully serves these nuanced conflicts as Chris is forced to confront the elusive monster within his psyche: that predator upon fear that causes him -- causes anybody -- to react in any sort of automatic way to a persons race. That his prejudice leads him to fall in love doesnt quite let him off the hook. This is one mark of this films intelligence. That his racism (if he can face it with sufficent courage) may restore him to a deeper sense of his humanity is an indicator of true vision.